Sunday, April 19, 2009

Malaga: Where the Waists are Small and the Curves are Kickin'

We spent about 12 hours traveling from Faro to Malaga--we left the hostel for an 9am train, spent about 4 hours on a bus to Seville, spent 3 or 4 hours in Seville, and then spent almost another 4 on a bus from Seville to Malaga. What little we saw of Seville was beautiful--lots of greenery and these lovely smelling trees that looked like over-grown wisteria. We missed our first bus in Seville because we didn't realize that the time changed between Portugal and Spain, so we whiled away the hour or so playing 20 questions (the kicker: telegraph. Try and guess that in 20 questions or less) and talking shit about pigeons. We got to the hostel in Malaga late at night, and went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant--the first real meal that we'd had in days. We'd been subsisting on bread, cheese, sandwich meat, fruits & veggies, and 1 euro soup in Portugal. Too tired to do much else after travelling so much, we read for a bit and passed out.

I think we've all agreed that Malaga was one of the top places we've visited so far--I loved Malaga so much. It is an absolutely gorgeous city. Kili said the gardens and parks in Malaga reminded her of the ones back home in Hawaii. It smelled amazing, and there were flowers in bloom everywhere. We spent the morning and part of the afternoon of our one day in Malaga wandering around the city--poor travellers' favorite past-time--and found a really cool terraced garden leading up to the city's castle/fortress. We spent some time in the center finding gifts for people, and walked almost the whole length of Malaga's beach looking for a good spot to sit in the sun. The beach was unfortunately under constrution while we were there (it looked kind of contaminated anyway...) so we had to settle for a bench on the boardwalk instead. We went back to the hostel in the late afternoon, after picking up dinner supplies (a total fiasco: I tried to make spaghetti, but Karen asked the butcher for ground pork instead of ground beef, and then instead of salt I added baking soad. I don't speak Spanish. It kind of tasted like barbecued spaghetti.) and spent the rest of the evening at the hostel.

We stayed in the Melting Pot hostel there, and it's honestly the best hostel I've ever stayed in--absolutely ideal. Cheap, clean, really friendly staff, pretty small so it's easy to meet people. The lounge areas were great, the kitchen was great. The building that it's in is really amazing, too. It's in a residential area backed up against a hillside, so you climb up a bunch of stairs before getting to the building. There is a terrace with beautiful blue flowers and their ridiculously tropical plants and a we had stunning view of the Mediterranean. After dinner, we played cards with some Australians and a couple of other English people, one of whom in exchanging work at the hostel for an extended (free) stay. He knows Malaga pretty well since he's been around for a while, and so when "quiet hours" hit at the hostel at 11:30, he took us to a really cool local bar that played slamming tunes all night (a mixture of reggae, swing, funk, and anything you can dance to), where we were the only tourists in the bar and where I am fairly certain that I was the first and only specimen of Blondus Maximus many of them had ever seen.

We spent the next morning in the sun on the terrace before checking out around midday. We were all sad to see Malaga and our amazing hostel go, but hopefully Granada will be a good end to our holiday before heading back to Perps early Sunday morning.